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Friday, May 30, 2014

Dead Panic, by Justin De Witt

You’re in a Cabin in the WoodsTM and the zombies
are closing in. From your living room window you can see their slow, groping strides as they
emerge from the forest that surrounds you. Somewhere out there, a rescue van
provides relief for those souls lucky enough to have working radios… but all
you have are wits, weapons, and a wish for survival. Can you hold back the
horde long enough to piece your radio back together, and call for the ride that
will SAVE YOUR LIFE?

Dead Panic puts you in that cabin, destined to live another
day or die as dinner for the undead. Choose your role, act quickly, and try to
outlast your neighbors – but make sure you work together well enough to
survive.

No. It’s not. I thought it was, and I was wrong. Thanks to
Justin De Witt and my free ticket to T.A.B.L.E., I was able to try out Dead
Panic in the perfect atmosphere – late at night at a local convention in a game
run by the designer himself. The only resemblance to Castle Panic is that the
board is built the same way and the
tokens look the same, but in all other ways this is a unique game – and one
that’s high-stress and puts lots of pressure on players to make good decisions.

Each player is working to survive constant Zombie attacks on
the shared cabin until three pieces of the radio can be retrieved, combined,
and used to call for a rescue van. Any players able to reach the van and drive
away win the game, and any players that die before they can do so become
zombies… and then can be completely eliminated if killed by other players.

Round by round players take turns moving around the cabin
and the surrounding area, searching for weapons and items, running from
zombies, and occasionally fighting them (usually only when required). That’s
not to say you HAVE to avoid them… I spent my entire game with a simple desire
– to punch zombies in the face until the succumbed to my muscular build and
crushing blows. Predictably, I was the first of the group to die and become a
zombie, and was the only one NOT to survive and win the game. I still call it a
win – I punched a zombie’s head off!

grrr... arrrgh...

Each zombie has a specific “power” level, and combat happens
as a result of dice rolls between the player and the zombie when they enter the
same space with each other. If the player wins the dice roll (the player’s die
+ weapons/bonuses vs the zombie’s power) the zombie is injured or beaten, and
if the player loses the dice roll they take a wound, unless they’re able to
deflect the damage by dropping a weapon or item. Players only have a few
available wounds before they become zombies permanently – this game is no joke.
In Justin’s words, “Death in zombie games must be a threat”, and death is
definitely a threat in Dead Panic.

The game of Dead Panic I played was special, not just
because Justin was running it, but because we saw something happen that Justin
had been waiting for since he’d designed the game (his words) – Brian (noted author for The Nerds’ Table) decided that, as the convict, he’d rather nobody
survive than allow other players to reach the rescue van first. In doing so he
played to his character’s personality and demonstrated a deep need for survival
and a total lack of compassion for the other survivors, something that’s
perfectly understandable for a convicted felon suddenly trapped in a cabin
beset by snarling, drooling former-people.

It was a brilliant strategy on Brian’s part and extended the
game – ostensibly a co-op game – by an extra 3-4 turns while the other players
tried to map out a way to get to the van while Brian was calling it away from
them. It was absolutely unnecessary and didn’t provide him any additional
“victory”, it was just his interpretation of how his character should be
played. I, already zombie food, thought it was hilarious, and Justin said he’d
been waiting for something like this to happen.

After reaching the van first,
Brian happily (though he didn’t have a choice because of turn order) allowed
the other refugees to board the van and flee to safety. It added a very nice twist to a game that was
already enjoyable, and a nice story for us re-tell. Also, Brian’s a jerk (j/k,
sort of).

Humans... or soon to be zombies!

Unlike just about every other cooperative game I’ve played,
Dead Panic involved a real and present threat of player elimination. A player
can die if zombies connect on too many attacks, then if players kill the
then-zombified player. While it’s fun to be a zombie and suddenly get to
“switch teams”, zombie players don’t have much in the way of advantages versus
the human players, and often die quickly. What’s left is a bitter corpse, and a
player left in the cold while the others are still locked in to a riveting
game.

I traditionally am not a fan of player-elimination in games
that last longer than half an hour, as nobody likes being the odd man/woman out
of a game night. I had such a good time watching Brian run away with the van
that I can’t really give an honest opinion as to how this affected my
experience, but I’d guess that in less awesome circumstances it would have been
a bummer. It’s not like Betrayal at House on the Hill - where it doesn’t really
matter if you live or die, as long as you get to see the ending – in Dead Panic
the fun is working out the solution for victory and feeling the drama of the
game as your options slowly dwindle and death closes in.

Dead Panic is absolutely worth trying, especially if you a)
love the zombie theme and/or b) really enjoy co-op games with twists and turns.
If you’re a fan of games like Pandemic or Zombiecide, give Dead Panic a try!